Video conferencing systems allow video conferencing participants to see and hear each other as they converse. During video conferencing, video of one video conferencing participant is captured by that participant's video capture device, sent from that participant's video conferencing agent to a peer video conferencing agent over a network, and displayed to a peer video conferencing participant.
Video capture devices may be purchased separately or built into a device. For example, laptops and mobile devices often have a built-in video camera above the display for capturing video. Alternatively, a standalone video camera be purchased separately and configured to interact with any general purpose computer. For example a standalone video camera may interact with a computer via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection.
Existing video conferencing systems do not allow participants to maintain eye contact with each other. A video conferencing participant must choose whether to look at the video camera or to look at the display. If the video conferencing participant chooses to look at the video camera, then the video conferencing participant appears to be looking at the peer. Unfortunately, the video conferencing participant looking at the video camera is not actually looking at the display of the peer and cannot effectively interact with the peer.
If the video conferencing participant chooses instead to look at the display, then the video conferencing participant does not appear to be looking at the peer. From the perspective of the camera capturing the participant, as displayed to the peer, the video conferencing participant appears to be looking to something next to the camera, i.e. the display.
Eye contact is an important part of face-to-face communication that is missing and overlooked in existing video conferencing systems.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.